Workers Organize

In February of 1999, workers from the St. Louis and St. Anne/Marie Antoinette hotels asked the Hospitality Hotels and Restaurants Organizing Council (HOTROC), AFL-CIO to help them organize a union. Aside from the low wages and lack of affordable health insurance, typical of the New Orleans hospitality industry in general, workers came with a long list of serious complaints about abusive working conditions specific to the Smith hotels:

Connie Lewis-Richardson Fired Worker (Hotel St. Louis)

• Employees there are not allowed to take breaks, are not credited at time and one half for overtime hours worked and some workers get no vacation time whatsoever.
• There is no concept of seniority nor are workers able to look forward to career advancement. Better paying jobs are filled by out of town transfers even though there are qualified employees with years of service on-site.
  
• Management favorites who inform on Co-workers receive preferential treatment.
  
• There is only one unisex bathroom located right next to the office of the supervisor who monitors usage closely.
• Housekeepers have to eat their lunch in a tiny space where rats have sometimes been seen.
  Incredibly, each worker is limited to just one gallon of drinking water per week regardless of the time of year.
• Housekeepers have been fired for merely touching the coffeepot.
  
• Housekeeping supervisors are required to clean the Smiths' private homes on and off site as a regular part of their daily duties.

When Management became aware of it's workers' organizing effort, it launched right into an all too familiar hostile anti-union campaign. Management's strategy is to create a climate of fear and intimidate workers into disregarding their legal right to organize and form a labor union.

• The hotel hired the McGlinchy Stafford law firm, the same firm employed by ARAMARK Corporation to combat unionization efforts at theConvention Center and Superdome. In both those campaigns, the employer was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have committed numerous unfair labor practices, including the illega l termination of six union supporters. The administrative law judge in the case recommended that the attorney on the case be investigated personally for possible ethical violations for their role.
  
  
• Employees at the St. Louis hotel have been required to attend frequent "captive audience" meetings where they are bombarded with anti-union propaganda. At the first such meeting when workers, who were expected to sit quietly and raise no dissenting voice, instead courageously raised their hands and began asking substantive questions about their poor pay, benefits, working conditions and treatment, management banned any further questions, comments or opinions from workers. Management even went so far as to forbid workers from discussing working conditions amongst themselves, which is a serious violation of their constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and association.
  
  
• Supervisors cornered workers one-on-one to warn them not to support the unionization effort. The company sent a barrage of letters discouraging employees from signing cards authorizing HOTROC representation and urging those who had already signed to ask for their cards back.
  
  
• Two workers were fired for actively supporting the unionization effort. In two years of employment at the hotel, Connie Lewis had received the "employee of the month" award eight times. She was fired for her outspoken advocacy of the unionization effort among her Co-workers. Patricia Moore was fired simply for having attended union meetings then going back to talk to her Co-workers about attending the next union meeting. On September 2, 1999, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office issued a complaint - equivalent to an indictment - charging the hotel with unfair labor practices in these dismissals.

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